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Cream - The Blues Years Live 1966 - 67

This is Cream live at Klooks Kleek, London on the 15th November 1966 and at Konserthuset, Stockholm on the 7th March 1967.

This material has been circulated as individual bootlegs and as part of Cream bootleg compilations, most notably as the first of two CD's titled 'Renovating The Blues'.

The concerts drew on material from Creams debut album 'Fresh Cream' and demonstrate clearly the powerful influence blues music had over both Cream and their early audience.

Klooks Kleek for example was a club based in the Railway Hotel, Hampstead, London with a capacity of around 100. The venue had a strong blues association, and other rock bands with a strong early blues pedigree played there including Ten Years After whose second album 'Undead' was recorded at the venue.

There has been talk that the Cream concert may have been recorded with a live album release in mind, however a number of issues around the mix and the equipment would have ruled this out and it seems inconceivable that Cream would have accepted a sub standard release despite their excellent performance on the night.

The Stockholm gig was recorded for radio broadcast and and as a result is also of good audio quality. Early bootlegs of this show had problems around speed, some were sped up by 10 to 15%, however this version is corrected, which suggests it came from the 'Renovating The Blues' source which is the best version after alot of care and attention went into correcting the speed and audio quality.

Source: Soundboard London - FM Broadcast Stockholm

Sound Quality: Very good mp3's London @192kbps Stockholm @320kbps

Genre: Blues Rock

Set: Likely that London was the end of the first set and start of the second and Stockholm radio edit only (cannot confirm full details).

Cream's debut album, Fresh Cream, was recorded and released in 1966. The album reached number 6 in the UK charts and number 39 in the United States. It mainly consisted of blues covers, including "Four Until Late", "Rollin' and Tumblin'" (written by Muddy Waters), "Spoonful" (written by Willie Dixon and recorded by Howlin' Wolf), "I'm So Glad" (written by Skip James) and "Cat's Squirrel". The rest of the album featured songs written (or co-written) by Jack Bruce, most notably "I Feel Free" (which was a UK hit single, but only included on the American edition of the LP), and two by Ginger Baker (one of which, "Toad", contained one of the earliest examples of a drum solo in rock music). Ginger Baker also collaborated with Jack Bruce's then-wife Janet Godfrey to write "Sweet Wine."

The early Cream bootlegs display a much tighter band showcasing more songs. All of the songs are reasonably short five-minute versions of "N.S.U.", "Sweet Wine" and "Toad". But a mere two months later, the set list shortened, with the songs then much longer.